Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, and also known by the pseudonyms
Nikolai Lenin and N. Lenin, (April 22, 1870 - January 21, 1924), was a Russian
revolutionary, a communist politician, the main leader of the October Revolution,
the first head of the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic and from 1922, the first
de facto leader of the Soviet Union. He was the creator of Leninism, an
extension of Marxist theory.

Born in Simbirsk, Russian Empire (now Ulyanovsk), Lenin was the son of Ilya
Nikolaevich Ulyanov and Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova. His father was a successful
Russian official in public education who worked in education and wanted
democracy. The family was of mixed ethnicity, his ancestry being “Russian,
Kalmyk, Jewish, German, and Swedish, and possibly others” according to
biographer Dmitri Volkogonov. Lenin was baptized into the Russian Orthodox
Church.

In 1886, Lenin's father died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and, in May 1887, when
Lenin was 17 years old, his eldest brother Alexander was arrested and hanged for
participating in a terrorist bomb plot threatening the life of Tsar Alexander
III. His sister Anna, who was with Alexander at the time of his arrest, was
banished to his family estate in the village of Kokushkino, about 40 km (25 mi.)
from Kazan. This event radicalized Lenin, and his official Soviet biographies
describe it as central to the revolutionary track of his life. It is also
significant, perhaps, that this emotional upheaval transpired in the same year
as that which saw him enroll at the Kazan State University. A famous painting by
Belousov, We Will Follow a Different Path, reprinted in millions of Soviet
textbooks, depicted young Lenin and his mother grieving the loss of his elder
brother. The phrase We will follow a different path refers to Lenin choosing a
Marxist approach to popular revolution, instead of anarchist or individualist
methods. As Lenin became interested in Marxism, he was involved in student
protests and was subsequently arrested. He was then expelled from Kazan
University for his political ideas. He continued to study independently, however,
and it was during this period of exile that he first familiarized himself with
Karl Marx's Das Kapital. Lenin was later permitted to continue his studies, this
time at the University of Saint Petersburg, and, by 1891, had been admitted to
the Bar. He also distinguished himself in Latin and Greek, and learned German,
French and English. His knowledge of the latter two languages was limited: he
relied on Inessa Armand to translate an article into French and into English in
1917. In the same year he also wrote to S. N. Ravich in Geneva I am unable to
lecture in French.

Lenin practiced as a lawyer for some years in Samara, a port on the Volga river,
before moving to St Petersburg in 1893. Rather than pursuing a legal career,
he became increasingly involved in revolutionary propaganda efforts, joining the
local Marxist group. On December 7, 1895, Lenin was arrested, held by
authorities for fourteen months and then released and exiled to the village of
Shushenskoye in Siberia, where he mingled with such notable Marxists as Georgy
Plekhanov, who had introduced socialism to Russia.

In July 1898, Lenin married socialist activist Nadezhda Krupskaya and he
published the book The Development of Capitalism in Russia in April of 1899.
In 1900, his exile came to an end, and he began his travels throughout Russia
and the rest of Europe. Lenin lived in Zurich, Geneva (where he lectured and
studied at Geneva State University), Munich, Prague, Vienna, Manchester and
London, and, during this time, he co-founded the newspaper Iskra (The Spark)
with Julius Martov, who later became a leading opponent. He also wrote several
articles and books related to the revolutionary movement, striving to recruit
future Social Democrats. He began using various aliases, finally settling upon ‘Lenin’
— ‘N. Lenin’ in full.

Lenin was active in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; РСДРП in
Russian) and, in 1903, led the Bolshevik faction after a split with the
Mensheviks. The names ‘Bolshevik’, or ‘Majority’, and ‘Menshevik’, or ‘Minority’,
referred to the narrow outvoting of the Mensheviks in the decision to limit
party membership to revolutionary professionals, rather than including
sympathizers. The division was inspired partly by Lenin’s pamphlet What Is to Be
Done? (1901–02), which focused on his revolutionary strategy. It is said to have
been one of the most influential pamphlets in pre-revolutionary Russia, with
Lenin himself claiming that three out of five workers had either read it or had
had it read to them. In 1906, Lenin was elected to the Presidium of the RSDLP
— but, almost from then right up until the revolutions of 1917, he spent the
majority of his time exiled in Europe, where, despite a hard and bitter
existence, he managed to continue his political writings.

This self-imposed exile began in 1907, when he moved to Finland for security
reasons. In response to philosophical debates on the proper course of a
socialist revolution, Lenin completed Materialism and Empirio-criticism in 1909
— a work which became fundamental in the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Lenin
continued to travel in Europe and participated in many socialist meetings and
activities, including the Prague Party Conference of 1912. When Inessa Armand
left Russia and settled in Paris, she met Lenin and other Bolsheviks living in
exile, and it is believed that she was Lenin's lover during this time. As writer
Neil Harding points out[8] however, although much has been made of this
relationship, despite the “slender stock of evidence … we still have no evidence
that they were sexually intimate”.

When the First World War began in 1914, and the large Social Democratic parties
of Europe (at that time self-described as Marxist, and including luminaries such
as Karl Kautsky) supported their various countries’ war efforts, Lenin was
absolutely stunned, refusing to believe at first that the German Social
Democrats had voted for war credits. This led him to a final split with the
Second International, which was composed of these parties. Lenin (against the
war in his belief that the peasants and workers were fighting the battle of the
bourgeoisie for them) adopted the stance that what he described as an “imperialist
war” ought to be turned into a civil war between the classes. As war broke out,
Lenin was briefly detained by the Austrian authorities in the town of Poronin,
where he was residing at the time. On 5 September 1914 Lenin moved to neutral
Switzerland, residing first at Berne and then Zurich. In 1915 he attended
the anti-war Zimmerwald Conference, convened in the Swiss town of that name.
Lenin was the main leader of the Zimmerwald Left.

It was in Zurich in the spring of 1916 that Lenin wrote the important
theoretical work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.In this work
Lenin argues that the merging of banks and industrial cartels give rise to
finance capital. According to Lenin, in the last stage of capitalism, in pursuit
of greater profits than the home market can offer, capital is exported. This
leads to the division of the world between international monopolist firms and to
European states colonizing large parts of the world in support of their
businesses. Imperialism is thus an advanced stage of capitalism, one relying on
the rise of monopolies and on the export of capital (rather than goods), and of
which colonialism is one feature.

After the 1917 February Revolution in Russia and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas
II, Lenin realized that he must return to Russia as soon as possible, but this
was problematic because he was isolated in neutral Switzerland as the First
World War raged throughout neighboring states. The Swiss communist Fritz Platten
nonetheless managed to negotiate with the German government for Lenin and his
company to travel through Germany by rail, on the so-called “sealed train”. The
German government clearly hoped Lenin's return would create political unrest
back in Russia, which would help to end the war on the Eastern front, allowing
Germany to concentrate on defeating the Western allies. Once through Germany,
Lenin continued by ferry to Sweden; the remainder of the journey through
Scandinavia was subsequently arranged by Swedish communists Otto Grimlund and
Ture Nerman.

On April 16, 1917, Lenin arrived by train to a tumultuous reception at Finland
Station, in Petrograd. He immediately took a leading role within the
Bolshevik movement, publishing the April Theses, which called for an
uncompromising opposition to the provisional government. Initially, Lenin
isolated his party through this lurch to the left. However, this uncompromising
stand meant that the Bolsheviks were to become the obvious home for all those
who became disillusioned with the provisional government, and with the “luxury
of opposition” the Bolsheviks did not have to assume responsibility for any
policies implemented by the government.

Meanwhile, Aleksandr Kerensky, Grigory Aleksinsky and other opponents of the
Bolsheviks accused them and Lenin in particular of being paid German agents.
In response Leon Trotsky, a prominent new Bolshevik leader, made a defensive
speech on July 17, saying:
“ An intolerable atmosphere has been created, in which you as well as we are
choking. They are throwing dirty accusations at Lenin and Zinoviev. Lenin has
fought thirty years for the revolution. I have fought twenty years against the
oppression of the people. And we cannot but cherish a hatred for German
militarism. … I have been sentenced by a German court to eight months
imprisonment for my struggle against German militarism. This everybody knows.
Let nobody in this hall say that we are hirelings of Germany.

After turmoil of the July Days, when workers and soldiers in the capital clashed
with government troops, Lenin had to flee to Finland for safety, to avoid arrest
by Kerensky. The Bolsheviks had not arranged the July Uprising. The time was
still not ripe for revolution, claimed Lenin: the workers in the city were
willing, but the Bolsheviks still needed to wait for the support of the peasants.
During his short time in Finland, Lenin finished his book State and Revolution,
which called for a new form of government based on workers’ councils, or soviets
elected and revocable at all moments by the workers. He returned to Petrograd in
October, inspiring the October Revolution with the slogan “All Power to the
Soviets!” Lenin directed the overthrow of the Provisional Government from the
Smolny Institute from the 6th to the 8th of November 1917. The storming and
capitulation of the Winter Palace on the night of the 7th to 8th of November
marked the beginning of Soviet rule.

On November 8, 1917, Lenin was elected as the Chair of the Council of People's
Commissars by the Russian Congress of Soviets.

“Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country,”
Lenin said, emphasizing the importance of bringing electricity to all corners of
Russia and modernizing industry and agriculture:
“ We must show the peasants that the organization of industry on the basis of
modern, advanced technology, on electrification which will provide a link
between town and country, will put an end to the division between town and
country, will make it possible to raise the level of culture in the countryside
and to overcome, even in the most remote corners of land, backwardness,
ignorance, poverty, disease, and barbarism. ”

He initiated and supervised devising and realization of the GOELRO plan, the
first-ever Soviet project for national economic recovery and development. He was
very concerned about creating a free universal health care system for all, the
rights of women, and teaching the illiterate Russian people to read and write.
But first and foremost, the new Bolshevik government needed to take Russia out
of the World War.

Faced with the threat of a continuing German advance eastwards, Lenin argued
that Russia should immediately sign a peace treaty. Other Bolshevik leaders,
such as Bukharin, advocated continuing the war as a means of fomenting
revolution in Germany. Trotsky, who led the negotiations, advocated an
intermediate position, of “No War, No Peace”, calling for a peace treaty only on
the conditions that no territorial gains on either side be consolidated. After
the negotiations collapsed, the Germans renewed their advance, resulting in the
loss of much of Russia’s western territory. As a result of this turn of events,
Lenin’s position consequently gained the support of the majority in the
Bolshevik leadership. On March 3, 1918, Lenin removed Russia from World War I by
agreeing to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, under which Russia lost significant
territories in Europe.

The Russian Constituent Assembly was shut down during its first session January
19 and the Bolsheviks in alliance with the left Socialist Revolutionaries then
relied on support from the soviets.

The Bolsheviks had formed a coalition government with the left wing of the
Socialist Revolutionaries. However, their coalition collapsed after the Social
Revolutionaries opposed the Brest-Litovsk treaty, and joined other parties in
seeking to overthrow the Bolshevik government. Lenin responded to these efforts
by a policy of wholesale persecution, which included jailing some of the members
of the opposing parties.

From early 1918, Lenin campaigned for a single individual (accountable to the
state to which the workers could ask for measures) to be put in charge of each
enterprise (workers having to obey him until it was changed by the state),
contrary to most conceptions of workers' self-management, but absolutely
essential for efficiency and expertise according to Lenin (it was argued by most
proponents of self-management that the intention behind this move was to
strengthen state control over labour and that the failures of self-management
were mostly because of lack of resources —a problem the government itself could
not solve as his licensing for a month of all workers of most factories proved).
As S.A. Smith wrote: “By the end of the civil war, not much was left of the
democratic forms of industrial administration promoted by the factory committees
in 1917, but the government argued that this did not matter since industry had
passed into the ownership of a workers’ state.”

Lenin had a certain admiration for the Irish socialist revolutionary James
Connolly, and the Soviet Union was the first country to recognize the Irish
Republic which fought a war of independence against Britain. He would often meet
with the famous revolutionary's son, Roddy Connolly and developed a close
friendship with him.